Sleep to dream

I know I've mentioned my anxiety dreams. They usually involved whatever project we were in the midst of, and they've mostly died down since we got the new mattress.

But last night I dreamed someone stole our fence. On one side, the whole thing was gone. On the side we built, someone simply took the panels and left the posts and cross pieces. That's my second fence dream, the last one involving 10 foot reciprocating saws and claims byt he neighbors that the fence belonged to them.

What's my subconscious obsession with the fence?!?

Negative Nancy strikes again

Yesterday was Adam's birthday, and I made him build a fence.



I helped, too. Mostly I threw a tantrum that we weren't getting anything done on the house because we are lazy. I like to call this "motivation." This fence sections off a portion of the yard exclusively for the dog on days when the meter is being read and other sundry events. Considering we put it together from scratch, I'm extremely pleased. This fence also hopefully marks our return to home improvement from weeks in exile.

I should briefly note that I had my first planned gathering on the patio Friday night. We've had my mother or the odd friend here and there stop by to have a beer. But I actually invited my girlfriends over, we made daiquiris (girly. I know.), played cards, drank beer, and ate lovely snacky things to go with my tomato with fresh mozzarella and fresh basil sandwiches. It was simply all-around great.

But now, because it wouldn't be a Monday without something painfully annoying...emphasis on the "pain"-- I burned my elbow. Badly. On the iron this morning. It was one of those cartoon delayed reaction moments where my arm sort of sizzled on the cotton setting for a second before I realized what was happening. And I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Daytona to work for a week, so I'm now really looking forward to the SALT water. Here's hoping it's curative and not hurtful.

And just to make this an even more Good Old Fashioned Monday, it piss-poured rain a good portion of my way in. Still, I couldn't help snapping a few blind, hold-the-camera-up-and-hope- it-catches-what-I-want shots of the journey into the storm.




And that makes the drive completely worthwhile :-)

No, I am NOT kidding.

Yes, that's right. MORE HAIL. This time, it was only nickel- to quarter-sized, and only lasted a few minutes, so it didn't really do any more damage. I was in my car, however, and it was a little frightening-- I can only imagine what it was like when the golf-ball stuff came down. It just kept exploding on the windshield.

And still, I think Fort Smith was spared the worst of it. Adam and the kiddo went to a minor league baseball game Saturday night and were delayed up there, 1 hour+ north, because of more hail, high winds, and tornadoes. So, yeah, all in all, it's ok. I know this system brought some really devastating tornadoes in Missouri, so my thoughts are certainly with them.

At any rate, not a lot else went on this weekend-- Adam's family came down for dinner Friday night, so I spent that afternoon sprucing up our 3 presentable rooms and the back patio. And we had the most awesome Cajun meal, at one of our favorite restaurants, so all was goo0d there. We bought all the supplies to complete one more section of fencing-- to give the dog a private yard to go to when we have company. This was a fiasco in itself. We tromped all over Lowe's looking for fencing panels, or even just the dog ears to build it from scratch. The garden people said it'd been moved to lumber, the lumber people couldn't be found...the kid who tried to help us in lumber saw us leaving and was able to get us talking to the guy in the store who "knows everything." He was finally able to help us. They'd stacked all the dogears out FRONT on the lumber end of the store. So we wrapped that up and went on our way.

Aaaand. That's about all we did this weekend. We found this cool vase on clearance at TJ Maxx, adn it is perfect for kitchen utensils:


And...um...remember head shops? Remember your college dorm? Remember big pieces of fabric tie-dye and batiks and Indian sari fabrics that worked great for covering walls and ugly recliners that you found on the side of the road, or something. Yeah, full disclosure, I thought that was some hippie dippy shit and not punk rock enough for little old me. But I could appreciate some pretty prints. I was still a little girly, too, after all. Well my sister bought me a beautiful and enormous piece of hand printed Indian fabric for Christmas this year. She just thought it might come in handy what with the new house and everything-- I have to say, that that is some forward thinking for a high school student.

This fabric will be perfect for living room curtains, and there's just enough of it.


The colors and pattern are perfect. I love it!

But I had a sad moment this weekend, too-- I over slept and missed bidding on this, the coolest light in the world.


I could kick myself.

Good fences make good dogs

Yeah, look. I know it's ghetto.

The dog won't stay out of the flower bed. He just keeps digging and digging and kicking dirt all over the patio, and tearing up the root system of the four o'clocks. I originally put up the wire thing you can kind of see in the back...as pups go, he's pretty responsive to boundaries, however real. But that cool, wet dirt got the better of him and he ended up in the bed once again yesterday.

I thought maybe a more substantial looking blockade would help, so I used the ends we cut off of our fencing boards. unfortunately, the little plants that are struggling to come up, are doing so right at the brick border, and I didn't want to hammer the wood into them and crush the little guys.


So I spread them apart, and now they look like jack-o-lantern teeth, and I managed to hammer my hand, which now hurts ALOT. And then I spread cayenne pepper water all over the bed and fence. We'll see how he does. The places where he's not digging are coming up like gangbusters


Meanwhile, the living room is kinda coming together. At least it looks like a place to sit and most of the boxes are out of the way. It makes me want to sit in it, and I guess that's all that matters.




Pay no attention to the shadeless lamp. It was a moving casualty.

We also finally got the insurance claim's itemized settlement statement and it's VERY detailed. We'll hire some of it out and do some of it ourselves. I'm just glad we can finally get moving on some of this crap.